Wait for ‘Dangal’ selection was emotionally exhausting: Sanya

Mumbai: Actress Sanya Malhotra, who plays the role of wrestler Babita Kumari in the upcoming film “Dangal”, says the wait to know whether she had cracked the film or not was emotionally exhausting.

Born and brought up in Delhi, Sanya came to Mumbai a few years back. In April last year, she auditioned for the Aamir Khan-starrer “Dangal” along with several other girls.

“I was doing audition after audition, it was like I should get the role as I am working too hard. For the first few days, it was like stressful. We wanted the film badly as we were working too hard. Though we learnt a lot, but the wait was emotionally exhausting,” Sanya told a news agency.

After several rounds of auditions, when Sanya got to know that she had been selected for the film she couldn’t believe that she had bagged the role of Babita.

“We were taking selfies with Aamir thinking we will tell everyone we met him. Soon we were told that we will be playing Geeta (enacted by Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Babita. We were both shocked. We were waiting for the answer but when we got to know, we were blank. I thought it’s a joke, we will be asked to undergo one more round of audition,” she said.

The most challenging part for Sanya was to get the technicalities of wrestling correct.

“I am a dancer, I do contemporary and ballet, I thought it will help me but it did not. I was graceful while I was doing wrestling part initially, I was told I have to be tough, rough,” she said.

“I have no idea about wrestling, I had not even seen any match. We saw lot of videos on wrestling, how wrestlers move, walk, their body language. Also, the training that we took helped us for the role,” she added.

The Nitesh Tiwari-directed biographical drama is the story of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, who taught wrestling to his daughters Geeta and Babita. The two girls then went out to become wrestling champions.